As CEO Thorsten Heins and his fluid corps of top lieutenants prepared to meet stern-faced shareholders at RIM's annual meeting on Tuesday in Waterloo, Ontario, they've got a lot of explaining to do. Several days ago, Toronto-based Research in Motion announced larger-than-expected first-quarter losses, the planned layoff of 30 percent of its staff, and a delay in introducing its crucial BlackBerry 10 until early next year.

No wonder Heins and other top executives were out in force in an American Fourth of July Week, launching a public-relations blitzkrieg behind the seemingly fantastical idea that a comeback for the brand not only is possible but is inevitable.

RIM's U.S. Managing Director Richard Piasentin told me that BlackBerry is basing its hopes on a number of factors of varying importance: the power of the coming BlackBerry 10 platform for mobile computing as well as smart phones; an intense refocus on RIM's historical base of business customers; expansion in realms such as automotive telematics; and a marketing and distribution strategy that may take the brand in some new directions but is still being defined. BlackBerry largely has relied for distribution on wireless carriers' retail outlets and a presence in general-merchandise retailers.

"We're very focused on what we have to do both in the short term and long term, and very explicitly, in the context of a solid foundation, we're here for the long haul," Piasentin said. "We're making very difficult decisions to make sure our operating model supports that perspective and are configuring our organization accordingly."

Piasentin asserted that BlackBerry is going through "a transition -- and that's what it is -- that all tech firms go through. The cycle gets repeated in every tech company out there. The difference between the good ones and the great ones is the way that they execute through it."

The time BlackBerry must lay claim to any mantle of greatness, of course, is right now -- when its executives probably would even be happy with a hold on mediocrity. With Apple iPhones, and other smartphones running Google's Android software, having gobbled away at BlackBerry's market share over the past five years -- and RIM clearly still reeling as it tries to find its footing -- many outside experts already have forecast the demise of the BlackBerry brand.

Things certainly didn't reflect well on the current appeal of BlackBerry a couple of weeks ago when I visited the lone U.S. standalone retail outlet that is totally dedicated to the BlackBerry brand. It's a store in northwest suburban Detroit that is close to a cluster of office parks containing the kind of business customers who used to be rabid for "CrackBerries." Yet on a weekday morning recently, the store was completely empty except for salesman Nathan Speidel, a lone figure behind the counter.

Twelve miles away, an Apple outlet in tony Somerset Collection mall in Troy, Mich., was buzzing like a digital beehive. At one particular moment there were 42 consumers in the store, which has about four times the square footage of the BlackBerry outlet. And there were no fewer than 21 blue-shirted Apple representatives counseling all those people on their purchases of iPods, iPhones and iPads – four staffers alone behind the store’s “Genius Bar” counter to answer Apple owners’ toughest questions.

To say that the scenes at the two stores recently were a metaphor for the divergent fates of the two companies would be to vastly understate the case.

Of course, how this lone outpost performs is only one indicator of the consumer appeal that BlackBerry has steadily, yet stunningly, lost over the last few years. Whether Heins and his totally reformulated leadership team have the strategy and wherewithal to pull out a comeback seemingly remains an open issue only to them. Most industry analysts already have essentially thrown a sheet over the body, saying that BlackBerry is finished as a consumer brand.

"That's the way I see it," said Harry Wang, director of mobile research for Parks Associates, a Dallas-based market research firm.